About two-thirds of homesteaded property owners in Coral Springs have enrolled in a Broward program designed to alert them when ownership records change. What developed around those alerts may be the more interesting story.

Most homeowners know whether they sold their house. What they may not know is whether someone else has filed paperwork claiming they did.

That gap between what a property owner knows and what appears in the public record is one reason Broward County created Owner Alert, a free notification service that has attracted about 350,000 property owners countywide.

In Coral Springs, enrollment has reached approximately 67% of homesteaded property owners, according to Broward County Property Appraiser Marty Kiar.

The service itself is relatively simple.

Once a property is registered, the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office notifies the owner when it receives a recorded document changing ownership of that property. The owner can then review the document and determine whether the change was authorized.

But what happened after the program launched in 2021 reveals something more interesting about how property fraud is now being detected.

An Alert Doesn't Stop the Filing

Owner Alert is easy to misunderstand. It does not prevent someone from recording a fraudulent deed.

Deeds are recorded through the Broward County Records Division and then provided to the Property Appraiser's Office, which uses those documents to update ownership records.

The Property Appraiser does not have the legal authority to decide whether a deed is legitimate or fraudulent.

That means the protection Owner Alert provides is largely about time.

Instead of discovering an unauthorized ownership change much later, a registered property owner can learn that the Property Appraiser has processed a change and see the document behind it.

If the owner authorized the change, nothing more is required.

If not, the owner can contact law enforcement and begin responding to something that otherwise might have remained unnoticed.

That became important soon after the program started.

Then the Calls Started Coming

Kiar has described homeowners contacting his office after receiving alerts for ownership changes they said they had never authorized.

Those calls pointed to a larger problem.

Someone who records a fraudulent deed may attempt to sell, mortgage or rent property that does not belong to them. And because the legitimate owner may have no reason to routinely examine public ownership records, the paperwork can create a problem before the owner realizes anything has changed.

Broward's response eventually moved beyond sending notifications.

The Property Appraiser's Office developed a Crimes Against Property operation that works with law enforcement to investigate suspected property-related fraud.

According to Kiar, the current team includes detectives from the Broward Sheriff's Office, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale, and works with the FBI and municipal police departments throughout Broward County.

Cases can also move to the State Attorney's Office for prosecution.

Kiar said the operation has handled approximately 1,000 criminal cases over the past several years, resulting in hundreds of arrests and hundreds of convictions.

Those figures are particularly striking because the original idea behind Owner Alert was much simpler: let a homeowner know that the ownership record changed.

The Difference Is When You Find Out

There is an unusual information problem at the center of property fraud. You can know with complete certainty that you did not sell your house.

But that doesn't necessarily mean you know immediately that a document has been recorded saying ownership changed.

Owner Alert closes part of that gap.

It doesn't determine whether the document is fraudulent. It doesn't replace law enforcement, an attorney or the courts. And the Property Appraiser warns that the service is not a substitute for a title search.

What it does is bring the actual property owner into the information chain sooner.

That is a relatively modest technological change with a potentially important consequence.

The system no longer depends entirely on a homeowner deciding to look for a problem that he or she has no reason to suspect exists.

Instead, the unusual activity can come looking for the homeowner.

From Notification to Response

There is another layer to what Broward has built. Owner Alert began as a service for individual property owners. But reports of suspicious ownership changes also helped create information that could be acted upon.

Over time, the county developed investigative capacity around the same type of fraud the alerts were helping residents notice.

That creates a progression that didn't previously exist in quite the same way:

• A change in ownership is processed.
• The registered owner is notified.
• An unauthorized change can be identified.
• Law enforcement can become involved.

That doesn't eliminate property fraud. But it changes the point at which a legitimate owner may discover it—and what can happen after that discovery.

For homeowners, especially those who have lived in the same house for many years and rarely have reason to think about their deed, that may be the most useful part of the system.

The protection isn't that nobody can ever file fraudulent paperwork.

It's that homeowners no longer have to rely entirely on stumbling across the change themselves.

And with roughly two-thirds of homesteaded property owners in Coral Springs already enrolled, a service that began as a simple alert has become part of the background infrastructure surrounding homeownership in Broward County.

Have you signed up for Owner Alert—or received an alert about a change to your property record?

Share your experience below.

----------
This story is part of The Bright Side, which is an ongoing series from Coral Springs Insider that highlights positive developments and community moments around Coral Springs.

Editor’s note: This piece was selected and adapted for Coral Springs Insider to provide local context and perspective on an issue relevant to our community.